Let Us Never Forget the Cloudless Autumn Day That Taught Us

What Really Matters

One Year Later, a Mother Recalls the Anguish

of Being Separated from Her Daughter

During Those First Terrifying Moments of 9-11

By Victoria Secunda

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent
And made forlorn
The houses born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

  Written During the Civil War
 

n September 11 of last year, at 9:25 A.M., my 33-year-old daughter, Jenny, called from her office in London, England, to say: "Mom, what's going on?"

            Like millions of others tuned in to the morning news, I had watched, stricken, as first one, then another airplane pierced the perfect sky to slice the heart out of the World Trade Center. Such news circles the globe in an instant—there is no time to collect one's thoughts, to come up with the right words to comfort a distraught daughter a world away. I told Jenny what little I knew—that there had apparently been a terrorist attack on the United States.

            And then, although I am a professional writer, words failed me. All I could do was babble, as if these might be the last, rushed words we would ever exchange.

            "I love you," I said.

            "I love you, too," Jenny replied.

            "I wish you were here."

            "Me too."

            In the background, a TV commentator chronicled more horrors: A third plane had barreled into the Pentagon, a fourth, downed in a Pennsylvania field. Jenny heard about them, too, from a colleague who was listening to BBC Radio.

            "Oh, my God," Jenny gasped, when the Twin Towers toppled.

            Then: "Mom. I don't think I'll be coming home for Thanksgiving."

            For millions of Americans, the holidays are hallowed times when families make a special effort to be together At our Connecticut house, Thanksgiving is our family's sacred, once-a-year day, with all the holidays rolled into one. My sister arrives from Texas, Jenny flies in from London, a niece takes the red-eye from L.A. Others drive up from Manhattan and nearby suburbs. Always, always, we are together, 16 of us, happily huddled around a 25-pound turkey.

            In the days leading up to the holiday, Jenny and I shop for traditional fixings and haul our bounty home. My husband sets up a long table; I unfurl a cloth I made in the 1980s, when I became the official Thanksgiving hostess. And every year, as I begin setting the table, Jenny, an artist by training, commands: "I'll do it. You always get the colors wrong."

            Everyone brings a dish to share the festive, culinary load; we eat until we are stupefied; we joke and catch up on each other's lives. After dinner, we all pull out new photographs of recent vacations, old photographs of relatives gone and of holidays in the long ago, with running commentary from Aunt Lottie, 92, our needle-sharp chronicler of family lore.

            Last year was different. Both Jenny and my sister decided that visiting our house was not worth being terrified at 35,000 feet.

            There's a hole in the family—a rupture in the collective American fabric. During last year's holiday events, thousands of people were absent who in peacetime never would have missed them. Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, sisters and brothers were trapped in the Twin Towers, or the Pentagon, or on four star-crossed airplanes, all extinguished in a burst of incomprehensible rage. Others, too shaken to take wing, were grounded by anxious sorrow.

            And yet September 11 also stirred a quite opposite response: The attack appealed to our better angels, causing us to demonstrate good will and generosity of spirit that moved us to tears, even as we wept with grief.

            Consider: At the World Trade Center, while thousands of people calmly walked down 90 or more flights of stairs, over 300 firefighters climbed up, aiding the escapees and steering them to safety. Other people came from all over the country to pitch in, moving rubble in five-gallon buckets under drenching rain, providing first aid or a hand to hold, standing on the streets holding up signs, thousands of them, with the words "Thank You! Thank You!" scrawled in huge letters to cheer the rescue workers. Hardened New Yorkers opened their doors and hearts to offer showers and a hot meal and a bed to exhausted, debris-cloaked strangers.

            Money poured in—piggybank pennies and six-figure checks—from Americans in towns large and small, and from countries the world over, to aid the families of those who were lost. People waited in lines for hours, without complaint, to donate blood. Houses of worship everywhere welcomed people of all faith—or of no faith—to participate in ceremonies of tearful, communal reflection.

            In the suburbs, no one honked horns; rudeness and short tempers vanished. Many people went into Manhattan, simply to bear witness to the chasm where the Towers once stood or to offer to help: Anything, anything. What can I do to help? Others heard from people near and far, giving the gift of tender concern to those of us who live within shooting distance of the city.

            "I just wanted to say  how sorry we Brits are for your troubles," said a friend of Jenny’s, phoning from London. "Are you okay?" asked neighbors and friends calling or dropping by or in e-mails. "Is everyone in your family okay?"

            From the ruins of devastating sadness, there was so much to be thankful for and to celebrate. It is impossible to overstate the impact of so many unexpected gestures, so many acts of stunning generosity and solidarity. It took one’s breath away.

            In April, Jenny finally flew in from London for a visit. As her plane descended in the evening darkness over New York to land at JFK, she gazed out the window and saw the twin towers of light at Ground Zero, illuminating the city’s great wound. Driving home from the airport, she stared, stunned, at the sight of American flags everywhere—hanging from buildings and apartment windows, painted on billboards and trucks, fluttering on mailboxes in Connecticut. "I am incredibly moved by this," said my unsentimental daughter. "I had to see for myself to believe it, to take it in. I’m so glad I came."

            Two weeks later, we returned to JFK to send her back to London, and as we said goodbye, I thought: From now on, every time we say goodbye, I’ll wonder if it’s the last time. But, unlike those whose nearest and dearest perished last September, I’m among the lucky ones.  My daughter is alive, and I have the luxury of wondering, rather than the anguished certainty of knowing.

            And so this September 11, seared in sorrow and soothed in loving-kindness, will serve to remind us that this is all that matters: To love one another, to give freely, to demonstrate our mutual regard, to count our blessings, to draw upon our noblest impulses—and never to forget the cloudless autumn day that shattered us with the worst, but which also brought out our best.

__________________________________

Victoria Secunda is an award-winning author (eight books), journalist, researcher and lecturer, whose work has appeared in Woman’s Day, TV Guide, Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, and Glamour, among other magazines. Her latest book is “Losing Your Parents, Finding Your Self: The Defining Turning Point of Adult Life” (Hyperion). 

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